In my rereading of "One Hundred Years of Solitude", "War and Peace", Listening to Turek's "The Twelve Well-Tempered" and "Goldberg Variations" over and over again, or watching "Mirror", "Night", "Dream of Life", "Modern Times", "Mr. Hulot" over and over again "Holiday", I really experienced "the wait for perfection and the reunion".
Of course, this "perfect" list also includes "Red Balloon" by La Morris. It brings me more fun every time I rewatch it. Yesterday, when I watched "Red Balloon" for the third time, I seemed to have discovered the concise and delicate structure of the film for the first time, and witnessed the magical moment when the red and blue balloons met for the first time.
Bazin praised La Morris's film, calling it "an unprecedented real children's film. It has reached the level of real children's literature." But it is strange that he is also the master of "Cinebook", and Bazin is in love with his father and son. Truffaut, in his assessment of La Maurice's films, was firmly opposed to Bazin.
Reading through Truffaut's critique of LaMorris, one can see that LaMorris offends Truffaut's extreme critical nerves with a fundamental error: his films are not real enough. The white-maned wild horse is a fake horse, and the red balloon is a fake balloon that follows people like a puppy. Their responses are human. And he deliberately made sentimental, let his protagonist be bullied and persecuted psychologically, and used artificial decoration to win the sense of tragedy in order to please the audience.
These criticisms are undoubtedly extreme. In fact, I am not disgusted with "extreme"; on the contrary, I think that "extreme" is almost necessary to achieve unique achievements in any art field. If there was no radical denunciation of French "quality films" by the members of Cahiers du Cinéma, and the radical admiration of Hollywood directors such as Hitchcock, there might not have been the brilliant achievements and widespread and lasting influence of the New Wave. However, extremes are extremes, and what should be clarified still needs to be clarified. I speculate that Truffaut's idol at the time was Rossellini, the master of neorealism, and he was also working on his own "The Four Hundred Blows." It is certainly inappropriate to criticize La Morris by Rossellini's cinematic standards. Because it means that critics are ignoring a fundamental reality: La Morris's films are fairy-tale films. It must be understood from the perspective of understanding fairy tales, and his films should be interpreted in the same way as fairy tales.
In fairy tales, animals must have human behavior, and every grass and tree must have its own language. Therefore, the red balloon of La Maurice neither lifts up nor touches the ground, but levitates in the fairy tale world. Fairy tales never need to solve problems through the laws of the real world. They follow the logic of Open Sesame and Aladdin's lamp, so difficulties must be overcome by desire. Truffaut seems to have inadvertently mentioned that La Maurice's film is a fairy tale, but his following criticism is completely different and incomprehensible:
"In fairy tales, everything is settled according to the laws of human nature, and everything will be Back to a secular order that conforms to the existing rules of drama. But with La Morris, things are different. At the end of "The White Horse" the horse sinks into the sea with the little boy, and in "The Red Balloon", the balloon belt The little boy rises into the air. Such an ending is only a means, a means to remove a tricky plot as soon as it hits."
This passage seems to suggest that Truffaut had never read a fairy tale. He also dismissed the barriers that La Morris put up in the film:
"...and the villains who came out to spoil the show were absolutely bad taste."
Is it strange? In fairy tales, the big bad wolf is the big bad wolf. Will there be a big bad wolf who has a conscience to discover that he is morally tortured because of eating lambs?
The final conclusion is even more mean to the extreme:
"Once you understand the equation, it's not that hard to 'make a La Morris movie.' A beautiful 'thing' as the object of conflict."
In fact, after so many years, no one else has made such an "easy-to-make" film. We can still only see and remember LaMorris's "Broncos" and "Red Balloons."
If I remember correctly, Truffaut later regretted his criticism and went back to acknowledging the value of La Morris. this is necessary. To be honest, Truffaut criticized La Morris for being sentimental, but I don't think there is less sentimentality in "The Four Hundred Blows" than in "The Red Balloon."
It must also be pointed out that LaMorris' films are not just fairy tales; It is a fairy tale that has been transplanted into the real world and grown in the real world. This is where his films are truly unique. But listen to what the venerable Bazin had to say about this:
"It is self-evident that some people will object that the balloons of La Maurice are also fake. For if it were not so, we see would be a documentary about miracles or magic, a completely different film. However, "Red Balloon" is a movie fairy tale, it is purely fictional, but the important thing is that the story is completely filmed. It is precisely because it basically does not follow any cinematic technique."
"The credibility of these films is inextricably linked to their documentary nature. Part of the events presented in the film are true records. Take 'Wild Horse' for It is said that the scenery of Carmack Island, the life of herders and fishermen, and the habits of the horse herds are the basis of this fable, and are the solid and unquestionable basis of this myth. However, the dialectics of imagination is rooted in this real basis Above, the white-maned wild horse's doppelganger is an interesting symbol of this imagination. Thus, the white-maned wild horse is both a real horse, chewing on the salty grass of Kamak Island, and a dream animal, its companion Drifting on the water forever with little Falco. The truth of the white horse in the film cannot be separated from the truth of the record, but in order for the latter to become the reality of our imagination, it must break the truth of the record and make it appear in a new form in the in reality itself."
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